June Gloom Consumes Hollywood: The Week That Studios Sought Out Agents

Intensively over the next few days, extending even for the next few weeks, a gaggle of studio moguls and/or their executives have scheduled a series of meetings with top agencies in Hollywood. Yes, the movie gods are coming down off Mount Olympus in order to soak up the wisdom of the mere mortals who rep the talent. Top agencies like CAA and WME and UTA and ICM are hosting intimate confabs with 20th Century Fox (Tom Rothman and/or Emma Watts) and Warner Bros (Jeff Robinov and/or Greg Silverman) and Universal (Adam Fogelson and/or Donna Langley) and Paramount (Rob Moore and/or Adam Goodman). That’s how seriously this Summer of Discontent has unsettled the studios who are beginning to admit being relatively clueless what to greenlight next now that so many movies aren’t clicking with moviegoers. “I have three heads of studios coming into my office. They’re completely at a loss about what to do,” one top tenpercenter put it bluntly. So what are the agents going to tell the studios? Here are our writers, here are their pitches and treatments and scripts, here is the originality you should be making instead of numbing predictability. Like, duh. Could this be an opportunity for creativity? That’s what a major producer told my colleague Mike Fleming yesterday: “this sluggish summer might be a blessing in disguise for talent and producers who want to take risks but have been hamstrung for the past two years by studios that have been operating in retreat mode, and looking for the safest bets possible. The lack of originality this summer might get off this safe track and in the mindset to take some risks again, and that would be a good thing.”

120 Comments

The idea that there are a stack of great original scripts sitting st agencies unsold is completely ridiculous.

Almost as ridiculous as the idea of studio heads asking agents how to run their business.

LL • on Jun 15, 2010 9:43 am

Um, yes, there are. Clearly you know nothing about the state of the industry. Most writers pen ORIGINAL material, but for awhile, new specs just haven’t been something studios heads want. They want(ed) material based on pre-existing intellectual property, remakes, reboots, and adaptations. Lately, writers have been feeling increasingly insignificant in the industry, as original material simply was out of style to studios who instead wanted sure fire bets. The fact that the studio heads are now realizing they do in fact need original material is a GREAT thing for original spec writers.

pho phum • on Jun 15, 2010 9:43 am

I didn’t say there weren’t ORIGINAL scripts, I said there weren’t GREAT ORIGINAL scripts.

They don’t need a stack, just a few solid innovative scripts with new story lines. They have the mechanics/talent to create great movies, but need new ideas. Here’s a tip, instead of considering only completed scripts from established writers, consider a new idea that needs some polishing whether from an existing writer or newbie.

Saw Robin Hood and Iron Man II already. Wanted to go to the movies two weekends ago and didn’t see anything – and it’s summer! The Karate Kid (a remake) looks good, but the rest can likely wait for dvd (or the local library collection). Blah.

junk • on Jun 15, 2010 9:43 am

There are, in fact, exactly that: stacks of great original scripts sitting at agencies, unsold.

anhonestanswer.com • on Jun 15, 2010 9:43 am

Bring back the Specs!!! Bring back buying the hot spec and the bidding wars and the indies. God damn it, bring back Harvey Weinstein. The old Miramax. Stop making risky movies like A-Team which are in fact the risky movies. Start betting on the sure thing. Good simple stories well told. Not save the world. I don’t want to hear the word innovative. Innovative in this town means saving the world or telling a story backwards. No, simple stories well told. Simple stories well told. Simple stories well told. Simple stories well told…

Thank you.

Teddy • on Jun 15, 2010 9:43 am

Let’s seriously hope so. The nail in the coffin will be the totally original Inception grossing 700million+

Dear Nikki & readers,
AT LAST!
There might just be an admission that there is a a shift in consumption. What’s needed is not just ‘originality’ as defined by past convention but a paradigm shift in the way the mainstream is funded and presented.3-D will not save things. You should but looking carefully at emerging trends and what people ARE reacting to and paying to watch.
Lower budgets, cross platform simultaneous releasing, success by creation of fan community and viral promotion aren’t just marketing tricks but something our best and brightest directors and writers should be embracing. Remember the Beatles were by their own definition ‘a dance hall band’ when they wrote ‘Tomorrow never knows’. The mainstream needs to be more cutting edge.Period!

Lee Cummings • on Jun 15, 2010 9:43 am

Totally agree Nikki and I’m so glad I’m a part of something great. I heart Maverick Entertainment.

Kirk Diedrich • on Jun 15, 2010 9:43 am

Your mouth to God’s ears. It looks like Dark City 2.0 and I LOVED Dark City.

Anne Mount - screenwriter/author/journalist • on Jun 15, 2010 9:43 am

Finally! Please look under the piles. There is “gold” there! And, it’s excellent and original!

Tristan • on Jun 15, 2010 9:43 am

A lot of the movies that came out in June have been uninteresting and unappealing. “Killers” looked like crap, “Marmaduke” appears to be dreadful (I don’t think the dog even talked in the comic strip), and “The A-Team” does not resemble the television series at all, not to mention its poster is one of the worst I have ever seen for a movie.

May did not have that may interesting movies to watch either. “Sex and the City” in the desert was not a good move, “Shrek Forever After” is not as appealing as the first three, and lot of the other movies – “Just Wright,” “Letters to Juliet,” “Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time,” and especially “MacGruber” – did not catch my interest to shell out cash to see those films.

I think the ones that came out are in the “been-there-done-that” approach, and the tickets are costly to a point where moviegoers would rather wait until cable or rental to see the films. It will interesting to see how the rest of June will fare.

Whodunit? • on Jun 15, 2010 9:43 am

Im with Tristan. June was weak due to the shitty movies released. Nothing looked good. Expect a huge reversal for July with the likes of The Last Air Bender, Inception and SALT. Im predicting those 3 movies will be huge hits and will allow us to sweep the month of June under the carpet.

You’re correct. Unlike Snoopy and Garfield, Marmaduke never communicated his thoughts to the readers. That was part of the charm of the comic strip, he was all dog, not some animal pretending to be human. But did anyone think to ask a cartoonist about a cartoon character? Of course not.

Marmadump • on Jun 15, 2010 9:43 am

Hahahahahahahaha. Marmaduke had charm. Hahahahahahaha.

good one.

Pfft. • on Jun 15, 2010 9:43 am

The agents are the problem here, folks.

Anonymous • on Jun 15, 2010 9:43 am

The agent system as we know it is anything but perfect but I blame the development system.

anon • on Jun 15, 2010 9:43 am

True and we really don’t need them anymore.

Fran • on Jun 15, 2010 9:43 am

The bottom line is, the execs assume they’re the smart ones. They’ve got all the answers, but have no ability to execute. They fancy themselves as writers. They give “notes” to creatives, even though they are incapable of creating themselves. But this is how they justify their existence and their paychecks, by telling a creative what their vision is for his/her project. It’s a joke.

HappyDance • on Jun 15, 2010 9:43 am

The writers, directors, crew and actors study film and live and breath their craft. The agents study business and the studio bosses are lawyers. Might be time to skip the studios and have prodcos band together to fund and market their own films, skipping the lawyers and MBA’s all together. The Met doesn’t hire lawyers to direct opera singers. It’s a miracle any decent movies ever get made.

Kathryn • on Jun 15, 2010 9:43 am

You’re right…AND the MBAs aren’t even using any of the right knowledge they should have gained in grad school. They’re doing all the wrong things in misguided attempts to reduce risk, which instead slows down development cycles, needlessly creates anxiety and micro-management of mostly the wrong parts of the creative process, and drives up costs for very little benefit. They don’t think creatively about what their product is, what forms it can take, and how to design all aspects of the business model, revenue stream, and marketing mix in creative and appropriate ways for various sorts of films. They remind me a lot of the U.S. auto industry executives in the 80s and 90s–oscillating between complacency and panic and reaching out for short-term moves to protect margins while maintaining legacy approaches that are slowly eroding ability to marshall talent to be audacious and generate the magic audiences expect.

Jose Nistal • on Jun 15, 2010 9:43 am

How many wisdom in few sentences.

dbmac • on Jun 15, 2010 9:43 am

wow. perfectly said. and with a built-in included remedy to boot.

billy bob • on Jun 15, 2010 9:43 am

you sound like a frustrated writer. Nice try

Brendan • on Jun 15, 2010 9:43 am

I agree with your point – but isn’t “frustrated writer” redundant? ;)

sbrown • on Jun 15, 2010 9:43 am

everyone here has missed the point. Until you engage the baby boomers, there is no blockbuster.

but the silly studios throw out the old (boomers of course) and try to fool the kids. bad move

disgruntled viewer • on Jun 15, 2010 9:43 am

Yeah, that’s a positive sign. Put your faith in the agents. They know the answer, LOL.

Anonymous • on Jun 15, 2010 9:43 am

Get in the business.

harrylime100 • on Jun 15, 2010 9:43 am

what we have seen at the studios is layered redundancy of ideas with a long stream of increasing expenses in marketing to make movies in a sense judgement proof.

it worked while people were continually consuming unlimited DVDs but no
one wants to own most of the movies poduce today and the cost and convenience wore off. DVD is a great business don t get me wrong. Stars are artifacts and fizzle- no one cares
requires risk-move back the models and I mean bsiness

Jeffrey • on Jun 15, 2010 9:43 am

You won’t print this but …

The studio heads don’t know what they’re doing so they’ll ask agents for advice? That’s like a deer asking a lion how to eat vegetarian. Those grubby weasels are the ones who put the business in this state in the first place; who do the studios think is selling them all that crap? Agents don’t know the first thing about what makes a good movie – just how to chisel for more money and then package. If the studios want to make good commercial movies (ie ones that sell) maybe they should try doing something original for a change. Don’t need a degree from Harvard to figure that out. You sure as hell don’t need a business card with three letters on it.

Anonymous • on Jun 15, 2010 9:43 am

I agree. The gross point system killed the golden goose.

Mike • on Jun 15, 2010 9:43 am

The notion that the studios aren’t making the good scripts is preposterous. Sure, the answer may be renewing their commitment to “the artist” or whatever but I’m pretty sure the real problem is they’ve gouged their audience so long the only people still stupid enough to go to a movie theater and not leave kind of pissed off are Twilight fans and nerds with literally nothing else to do in their sad lives. Netflix makes money because they have a huge catalogue of great movies for little to no money. You don’t get rich charging a small population a lot, you get rich charging everybody very, very little all the time. Lobby Congress to let you buy back the theater chains!

I agree. There is a major shift in consumption. How blind can they be? Reboots of old TV Series that were rather poor to begin with? What demographic are they going for? They need to take risks with lower budgets and release cross platform, hire marketing execs who UNDERSTAND viral promotion, and make deals with producers who have a pulse on what’s going on.

Troy • on Jun 15, 2010 9:43 am

Thats because the big “know it alls” really don’t know shit. It’s all in the family. It’s time for an independent revolution.

Comedy writer • on Jun 15, 2010 9:43 am

Just a thought: instead of shelling out lots of money for mediocre and bad specs that have the germ of an interesting high concept, or pitching less than coherent ideas to ten writers who then scramble to get the job with rushed and unoriginal takes, why not try a different approach?
Studios and producers should take writers with interesting and original voices and make small deals with them, against larger numbers so the incentive to do something commercial remains. The key is this would have to be a blind and not something where the writer gets bogged down with notes at the pitch/outline stage.
Pay us 70 against 300 for a blind, let us go off and be truly creative. You’ll get some truly awful stuff, but you haven’t paid that much for it and I bet you’ll also get truly inspired original hits out of this system.

HappyDance • on Jun 15, 2010 9:43 am

This was actually the case before the strike; then the studios took advantage of the strike to break off standing deals with writers and directors.

Harry Pebbel • on Jun 15, 2010 9:43 am

Nearly everyone who works in Hollywood at some point in their childhood saw a movie that connected with them in a profound and personal way, that transcended the bounds of beginning-middle-end and nourished their soul. It might have happened only once; or it might have been a succession of films that deepened their understanding not only of film but of themselves and of the world.

That primal bonding experience is what keeps us going.

Studio executives answer to many masters — the shareholders, the theater owners, the CEO, focus groups — whose interests necessarily must be served; but if serving those interests actively destroys any chance of delivering at least occasionally on the promise of real meaning, people have no reason to go.

You can still have programmers and exploitation pictures and all of the rest of the seat-fillers and God bless ‘em all, but once in a while, you have to distribute a movie that dares to speak truth, even if it violates all of the obvious rules. Previous generations did it for us, and that’s why we’re here in Hollywood. We owe it to the next generation.

Fortunately for those bewildered studio heads I addressed these very issues in an insightful essay available on Huffington Post under the title “Make It Tasty.”

And many of these questions are coming up in the message boards on pro.imdb.com for the much-pirated and heretofore unreleased “Unthinkable,” where the questions of piracy and audience appetite are covered with surprising civility and consideration.

jean r. • on Jun 15, 2010 9:43 am

One tip to the studios: it might be helpful if there wasn’t so much fucking information/publicity about movies YEARS before they make it to the screen–to say nothing of the avalanche of publicity when the movie is at last released. Between web sites, fashion magazines, TV talk shows, “Entertainment Tonight”-type shows, and all the rest, it’s hard not to be sick to death of a movie well before it makes it to the screen (I also think this is why the Academy Awards are so boring these days: it’s not all that interesting to see, say, Nicole Kidman on the runway or up on stage if she’s been on the cover of every fashion magazine and sitting in the TV interviewer’s chair incessantly). “Avatar” was a pleasant surprise because so much of it had been kept under wraps during its production. The same is true of the indie “sleepers” that pop up every so often.

sum guy • on Jun 15, 2010 9:43 am

irrlevant. if a movie sucks, it sucks. promoting it doesn’t make it suck less; not promoting it doesn’t make it better.

HappyDance • on Jun 15, 2010 9:43 am

For what it costs to rent a tack for premiere of the flop A-Team the studio could have made any number of small creative projects; it’s cheaper to make many Juno’s than to put all of your cash into one big stinking A-Team egg.

ordinary joe • on Jun 15, 2010 9:43 am

It may seem to make sense, but financially it doesn’t. Tent pole movies are far less risky than spending the dough on smaller movies. Kind of sucks, but it’s the reality. Not to say that all tent poles work, just that it’s a well-known fact it’s the better bet.

Kreskin • on Jun 15, 2010 9:43 am

Stand back and get ready for the new paradigm folks. Most Movies and TV Shows are boring and have no emotional/intellectual value beyond selling popcorn to the masses and then forgotten. What’s needed to fix the Studios is the same thing that’s needed to fix ourselves – Movies that can change lives and inspire ideas. A Skunk-Works style development division at each of the 6 Major Studios is the way: Epigenetic Films, Brainwave Entrainment Entertainment, Audience Interaction Movies – Productions that understand the classical stimulus/response for emotion and intellect. I hear the train a comin’ – wake up HOLLYWOOD…!

mike • on Jun 15, 2010 9:43 am

thank god. we need more original movies like Inception, District 9, The Hangover etc. it’s always nice to have a little of branded entertainment for mindless fun but original movies are what excites us about movies in general and are vastly more memorable years down the road such as The Usual Suspects, The Sixth Sense, etc.

Studios need more actual storytellers throughout their ranks, but especially in their upper decision-making ranks. Agents need to spend more time finding and nurturing talent and less time poaching talent from one another. Both sides need to stop making it so impossible for ‘new’ talent to get read. Distributors and exhibitors need to switch to tier ticket prices – not quality-based, but production cost-based. Small films, smaller prices; big films, reg price; 3D, premium price. And Studios need to understand that the ‘stupid’ audience has figured out the difference between corporate product designed to rake a high weekend gross (and sell hamburgers) and an actual movie.

For starters, that is…

Sally • on Jun 15, 2010 9:43 am

Look for real STORIES, not A-Teams and violence. Audiences are hungry for real stories.

Hollywood has only itself to blame for its problems. The so-called corporate “synergy” created by all those mergers were supposed to make it cheaper to make, market, and distribute movies. Yet costs have a rate of inflation second only to Zimbabwe.

Why? Because these businesses are, for the most part, poorly run. They are poorly run because their management is too busy trying to chisel some actor out of their 2% share of the net as an excuse for them to get a bigger bonus than trying to figure out what audiences want.

They try to go the easy way by finding some sort of “magic bullet” to make money. A remake or reboot does well, then you gotta do all remakes and reboots, a 3D movie does well, then all films must be 3D. It’s not working, because most of these fads are more fizzle than sizzle, and now they’re going to agents to find yet another magic bullet.

There are no safe bets! As soon as the studios awaken to this fact, the floodgates should open to originality. Everything is a risk. And the biggest risks usher in the biggest rewards. AVATAR, for all its grandiosity, was an ORIGINAL film — not a sequel, remake, reboot, or spinoff. INCEPTION looks totally fresh and original and the grosses will surely reflect that. LORD OF THE RINGS was a giant risk and is one of the most successful film trilogies of all time. Our business needs to return to a creative, feel-it-in-your-gut response to story, concept and character. Look at the success of television programs that cut through the clutter to find audiences: Glee, Modern Family, Mad Men, Breaking Bad, Californication, True Blood. The cable networks purposely look for ideas that are FRESH and UNIQUE that you can’t find anywhere else. That’s HOW they attract their audience. The movie studios would do well to follow suit and return to smart risk-taking by empowering creativity, originality and passion. Because no matter how they try to convince themselves otherwise, EVERYTHING is a risk! Why not be bold, be daring, be fresh? In a business where there are no SAFE bets, isn’t that the SMART bet?

anhonestanswer.com • on Jun 15, 2010 9:43 am

I’m sorry Seth. Avatar was not original. It was awful!! It was a terrible story and not original. The technology was new. It should have been a 10 minute short shown at Disneyland. But a movie. Come on, bro! It sucked. Could not get through it. I mean dreadful.

In general most of us are talking about movies being made again. Stories told on a big screen where we share emotions just by sitting in the same room with others. Simple stories well told. You need to rethink what you are saying or just leave out the Avatar reference.

Thank you.

anon • on Jun 15, 2010 9:43 am

Surely they will be HEARING – or is there a peverse irony to the gramatical error? ..